Benjamin Alire Saenz comes back to the discipline of poetry to reveal his troubled passage through a beautiful but disastrous love affair, fueled, in part, by good wine and bad drugs. This is a time of terrible violence—in the world, in Juárez a ten-minute walk away from his home, and at the corner convenience store where the homeless shuffle about, sucking on quarts of beer and selling drugs. Yet, through the healing practice of writing and painting, the poet intuits the innocent core of being human, a place nourished by compassion, the imagination and the exquisite taste of the last cigarette on earth.

Jaya’s a rich kid. Transgender. Rasa’s a victim of sex trafficking. A testament to the healing power of love.

Seventeen-year-old Jaya Mehta detests wealth, secrets, and privilege, though he has them all. Rasa Santos, a beautiful young woman, is of mixed ethnicity. She's the sole provider for her three younger siblings. Rasa's only inheritance is her stunning beauty and her mother's trade, prostitution. Neither Jaya nor Rasa have ever known real love or close family—not until their chance meeting one sunny day on a mountain in Hau’ula.

The unlikely love that blooms between them must survive the stranglehold their respective pasts have on them. Each of their present identities has been shaped by years of extreme family struggles. By the time they cross paths, Jaya is a transgender outsider with depressive tendencies and the stunningly beautiful Rasa thinks sex is her only power until a violent pimp takes over her life. Will their love transcend and pull them forward, or will they remain stuck and separate in the chaos of their pasts? In the end, their story is a testament to the healing power of love.

The history of the world, from Ometeotl to the Aztecs, in an exciting, unified narrative.

The stories in Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky trace the history of the world from its beginnings in the dreams of the dual god Ometeotl, to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico and the fall of the great city Tenochtitlan. In the course of that history we learn about the Creator Twins, Feathered Serpent, and Dark Heart of Sky, and how they built the world on a leviathan’s back; of the shape-shifting nahualli; and the aluxes—elfish beings known to help out the occasional wanderer. And finally, we read Aztec tales about the arrival of the blonde strangers from across the sea, the strangers who seek to upend the rule of Motecuhzoma and destroy the very stories we are reading.

The true story of the most audacious pot smuggle ever attempted.

Against a 1970s backdrop of war, corruption and radical activism comes the true story of a loose confederacy of thrill-seeking opportunists and disaffected veterans who pull off the largest pot heist on record: more than 28 tons of primo Colombian headed for the densely populated coast of Massachusetts in a rusty shrimp boat at the height of hurricane season. From the borderland of El Paso to the High Sierra of Mexico to the coast of South America and back, this is how they parlayed their first puff into truckloads, planeloads, and ultimately, the mother lode. Folly Cove is a high-spirited tale of the early days, when the business of pot was a benign crusade to keep America high.

A girl learns from her grandfather that circles exist in the most unusual places.

Grandpa says circles are all around us. He points to the rainbow that rises high in the sky after a thundercloud has come. “Can you see? That’s only half of the circle. That rest of it is down below, in the earth.” He and his granddaughter meditate on gardens and seeds, on circles seen and unseen, inside and outside us, on where our bodies come from and where they return to. They share and create family traditions in this stunning exploration of the cycles of life and nature.

A lifelong falling-in-love story between a woman and her body.

A woman’s story of sex, lust and finally love, spanning WWI to WWII in Paris. It’s soon after the Great War that Simone comes of age, overwhelmed with sexual longing, but it’s not until after the tragedy of Hitler’s occupation and her part in the French resistance, her body slipping in Parkinson’s Disease, that she discovers the truth of her longing. Early in her adult life, and frequently, she sleeps with strangers and abandons herself to lust—particularly to a man named Jacques. She leaves her first husband for Jacques and spends over a decade as his lover in the intellectual circles of Paris. They eventually marry, yet Simone still sleeps with strangers, her husband the most distant of them all. What is she seeking? Simone isn’t sure. More than sex—a tenderness that lust can never fill. Just when her body feels most fragile, she meets Pierre, a much younger man, a novice at love-making, clumsy and overly emotional, a fool—yet there is something about him.

Playing Beauty Party in Spanish and English!

Birdie and Grandma are having a girls’ day! They must have had fun because Grandma’s all worn out. Birdie has a solution: a makeover! It’ll give Grandma a chance to relax. Birdie insists that Grandma lie down because this beauty parlor has a lot of moving parts—chinny-chin-chin hair removal, long stretches of blush, slashes of lipstick, and eyeshadow. Earrings, scarves, the works! Birdie knows best: she owns this beauty parlor!

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